The hon. Gentleman makes the perfectly fair point that we have too many empty married quarters. We have currently more than 13,000 vacant married quarters, of which about 4,000 are being sold or leased and approximately 9,000 are service stock.

However, the House should remember that service housing stock must meet the special and unique needs of the armed forces, and that the lowest practical level of vacant properties will always be greater than that of local authorities or housing associations. That said, we acknowledge that we need to do better, and we will do better.